BJP says it has found new ally in Uttar Pradesh

New Delhi, Jan 24 (IANS) The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will contest the upcoming general elections in Uttar Pradesh with a new ally and will announce next week the name of the party it is allying with, says BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar.”We are in talks with a party and we will announce it at an appropriate time, probably next week,” Javadekar told IANS.

Javadekar said at its central election committee meeting scheduled for Jan 29, the party would take a call on whether former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, who is away from active politics because of his ill health, would contest the next general elections, likely to be held in April or May.

He claimed Uttar Pradesh leader and party vice-president Kalyan Singh’s exit from the BJP would have no impact on the party’s performance in the upcoming polls.

“He was unfortunately driven by personal agenda and personal agenda does not work. He was concerned about one or two seats - his own and that of his son,” the BJP spokesperson held.

Kalyan Singh, who was thrice the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, left the party when it announced Ashok Pradhan would be its nominee to contest the Bulandshahr Lok Sabha seat. Kalyan Singh had accused Pradhan of being responsible for the defeat of Kalyan’s son Rajvir in the 2007 assembly elections.

Javadekar said terrorism and inflation would be at the centre of the upcoming general election campaign as they were during the recently concluded assembly polls.

There has been a perecption that the two issues did not find much resonance during the assembly polls. Reacting to this, the BJP spokesperson said: “It is over-simplification, not analysis, to say that the issues of terrorism and inflation did not work. Inflation matters even today.

“When we won Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand and Punjab every one said it was because of the rising prices that the Congress lost,” he said.

“We have won 40 Lok Sabha seats and got 300 MLAs in these three states. The Congress got only 280. We have got 34 percent vote, while Congress got 32 percent. We have two major states. The Congress retained only a city-state and they won in Rajasthan because of our failure at micro level management,” Javadekar said.

Javadekar was confident that the BJP and the Shiv Sena would contest the next general elections as allies despite the current border spat between Karnataka and Maharashtra.

“We will have electoral ties with the Shiv Sena, no problem. The boundary dispute between Karnataka and Maharashtra has been there for 50 years now and the Congress is responsible for it since the party ruled Karnataka for 49 years and Maharashtra for 42 years,” he said.